"President Trump says increasing liquefied natural gas exports will lower gas prices. He’s got it all backward."
"During President Trump’s inauguration speech, he promised to unlock the “liquid gold” beneath Americans’ feet and ramp up fossil fuel production. Doing so, he suggested, would lower gas prices and lead to cascading American wealth. In his executive order declaring a “national energy emergency,” he directed the Department of Energy to resume processing LNG export authorizations and prioritizing the development of LNG in Alaska.
There is no actual “energy emergency”—at least not in the sense Trump means. Under former president Joe Biden, the United States was already pumping out record amounts of oil and gas. And growing evidence suggests that Trump’s plan to maximize LNG exports will actually achieve the opposite of his stated goal: Two January reports show that increased US LNG exports will drive up domestic gas prices, with most of those LNG profits winding up overseas in the coffers of foreign investment firms, with particular advantages for China.
The first report, from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, found that a startling proportion of US LNG profits go to foreign investment firms. Researchers found that 14 investment firms, from eight foreign countries, have financed 11.5 billion cubic feet per day in US LNG export capacity—about 78 percent of peak US LNG export capacity in 2023.
For example, the Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas is 70 percent owned by QatarEnergy, a firm owned by the Qatari state. That could explain why Qatar’s energy minister said last month that he wasn’t worried about US competition in the LNG world—in fact, he thinks Trump is “good for business.”"
Delaney Nolan reports for Sierra magazine February 9, 2025.
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